sign of the times

Last summer, I was at a crucial point in my decision process about whether or not to go forward with my PhD or to "cut and run". With most of the faculty from my own academic concentration rating somewhere between "clueless" and "douchebag" on the functionally useless scale, I had all but stopped trying to find academics in my department to talk out my problems with. And then I ran across this guy, this one junior professor from another academic unit in my department, and we had a really nice chat.

Well I stopped by his office again yesterday when I was on campus to officially drop out (i.e. meet with the dean and say "dude, I'm out of here...now how do I do this in a way that will not tax me in terms of me money, time, or my precious little tolerance for faculty based chicanery?"). Turns out this fellow was just up for tenure review this past year and didn't get it.

Oh. My. God.

He is an EXCELLENT faculty member. He has grant money. He has an active research program. He has great data. He's doing high impact research. His students LOVE him. He goes the extra mile for graduate and undergraduate students and for the department - the list of how would just be crazy long and it would sound like I was describing mother fucking theresa. But he didn't have enough first author publications. Thus, the department's finding was that if they could vote on the two separately, they would (a) give him tenure but (b) not promote him. This is the same deal which was given to a junior faculty member in my own academic unit this past year. The professor in my own unit is an unctuous bastard who routinely scoops the graduate student slave labor he employs, who runs a research sweat shop staffed by a gaggle of uninformed and undertrained undergraduates, and whose motto could quite reasonably be "Cramer can cram it!"

For some reason, which I do not fully understand possibly because I didn't want to pry for more information than this (outside my unit) professor was volunteering, this professor did NOT get the tenure without raise deal.

And so I left his office yesterday feeling more shaken than I had about actually officially dropping out a few hours before. On the, uh, bright (?) side, this embittering news only strengthens my conviction that I have made the right decision in leaving my program.